23 November 2009

It all started with not feeling very well yesterday, but then I wasn't supposed to feel well yesterday.

I went out on Saturday for early birthday drinks, which started at 4pm with Gingerfeck, with Mrsslippy and the rest arriving later, what with them having to have worked..

So I was fully expecting to feel headachey, with an unsettled stomach - or just plain hungover if you want to call it that.

But it didn't feel like a classic hangover, and rather than feeling better as the day progressed, I just felt worse. My suspicions were aroused that there might be something else going on when I noticed that as we watched TopGear, Mrsslippy (who wears a jumper in the summer), was happily sat on the bed in just a post bath towel, I (who break into a sweat at the merest glimpse of sunlight), was curled up under the duvet shivering.

Out came the thermometer, and as suspected, I wasn't cold, I had a temperature of 39 degrees.

Today, I still feel like shit, and more annoyingly, I feel like shitting all the time. It's probably not the dreaded swine flu, but there is a definite ambiance of farmyard in the toilet.

It's bad, but I've had worse.

I've seen more than my fair share of shit back when I was nursing. It never ceased to surprise me with either the volume or force that a patient could evacuate their bowels. My personal favourite was a gentleman in a standing aid, who had such sudden and explosive diarrhoea as he was being stood up that he blew down his pyjamas, and proceeded to create a toxic puddle so wide that we had to put plastic bags on our feet in order to wade through the effluence and rescue him from the mechanical contraption.

Several years ago, while I was still living and working at the Hospital, I picked up a nasty little winter diarrhoea an vomiting bug. After a day of lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, only interrupted by frequent trips to the toilet, I decided I would feel better if I had a bath.

Indeed, after a nice long soak I was feeling a little better, and started to climb out. It was at that point that I heard the taps being run on full blast.

Only I could see the taps.

And they were off.

So where was the noise coming fro......OH SWEET JESUS!!!!

Looking down I could be a rapidly expanding brown puddle around where my one leg still in the bath was balanced. Whenever a patient had explained away their feacal incontinence in the past with "I didn't know I was doing it nurse", I was always slightly sceptical.

I had no idea it was coming out of me. It seemed my sphincter had failed, and the only thing that was keeping the contents of my bowels in my bowels was the pressure of one arse cheek against the other.

The very act of spreading my legs to step out the bath had broken the seal, and a gallon of effluence had very suddenly, and without sensation emptied itself into the bath.

I rather embarrassingly rinsed it out and showered off, then dipped into the bathroom next door for a repeat exercise in an unsullied tub, and this time promising myself to take greater care when stepping out.

So as bad as I feel now, I know it could be worse, and that I will get better. I'm just glad that the only time in adulthood that I've shat myself I was naked, on my own, and standing underneath a shower head.

And on that note, I'm off to the toilet again. Cleaning a bath out is a lot easier than cleaning a mattress....

17 November 2009

I was recently reminded of an occasion where I was involved in some noisy drunken sex.

I say involved, but I wasn't so much a participant, as in instigator and observer.

Several years ago I shared a house on the outskirts of beautiful Cambridge with some not so beautiful friends. As with all rented accommodation, every room that you could fit a bed in was technically a bedroom, so as to maximise income for the landlord.

I was lucky enough to have a downstairs bedroom, backing onto the garden. I say lucky, because it was nearest to the kitchen - a far greater priority than bathroom proximity - and it was graced with patio doors.

This meant that on a summers morning I could simply roll onto the floor, kick open the doors, and sunbathe in the low morning sun. As the day passed, I could drag my armchair out, and still be able to see my tv, which I'd hooked up to the Sky in the living room with 30 feet of under carpet wiring for a pre Sky Multi-room world.

And best of all, come the evening, I had the largest en suite in the world, because the world was my en suite.

No drunken wandering about the house for me in the middle of the night, just stand up and turn right. I would generally wander down the lawn a bit, but if it was pissing it down, then I was pissing where I stood.

One balmy summers evening, I'd spent a very fruitful few hours day getting well and truly lathered at social club where I worked. The walk home passed a little Kebab van that was always parked a few doors down from me, so feeling the need to settle my swilling stomach, and because I'd been so busy boozing, I'd forgotten to have dinner, a large donor was procured, and practically swallowed whole.

An hour later and I'm tucked up in bed, and everything starts to swim....

Fortunately, the en suite was as ever, unoccupied, and ready to face the full brunt of whatever I could throw at it, and boy did I throw.

Flame grilled lamb with assorted salad, wrapped in lightly toasted flat bread, all in a Broadside jus was served up on the patio. Taking care to try to remember that it was there if I needed to use the en suite facilities again, I left the doors open, and collapsed back on by bed.

I'm not sure how long after that it started, as I had started to drop off, but I was suddenly aware of noises outside. Panting and grunting, getting louder and louder, from somewhere in the darkness. I peered round the curtain from my prone position, but could see nothing in the darkness.

Now standing, I scanned the garden. The noise seemed to be coming from everywhere but I could see nothing. I braced myself to step out into the void, taking care to step over what I'd recently voided, but when I looked down - it was gone!!

And then I saw the first of many pricks.

In the shadow of the doorstep were two hedgehogs, their messy footprints led back to my messy foodstuffs, which it appeared had now been largely consumed.

Like a couple of cheap chavs, wankered on someone else's booze, and stuffed on a discarded donor, they had thrown caution and abandon to the wind, and were going at it like there was no tomorrow in the nearest doorway. Mine. And by God were they loud.

So next time you hear the classic joke 'How do hedgehogs make love?', before you leap in with the obvious 'very carefully', check first whether they are pissed or not.

Because if they are, I can guarantee there's not a lot of care, or affection shown. Just a lot of grunting, and a complete disregard for who's watching, or gratitude for the free night out.

15 November 2009

It's all been a bit quiet from me recently. Fear not, I'm not dead, just been a little bit undead.

Mrsslippy and I have been away again to another WiFinotspot - this time the depths of rural Norfolk, with the reason being a weekend break with friends, which me and 'teh Mrs' extended into a full week.

Katieluv found us a lovely old building that was more than ample for the dozen of us that were there for the weekend, and mahoosive when it was just the two of us.

A 3 hour 75 mile drive on a cold damp Friday evening, which was repeated as a 3 hour round trip on Saturday morning when I realised I'd forgotten my manbag containing my ipod, without which would mean that not only would there been noplaylist for the main event of the weekend, a spooky Halloween party, but we'd also be forced to watch just terrestrial TV for the rest of the week, rather than hooking up the poddage to the TV to watch Frisky Dingo.

Theme for Halloween was 'things that scare you'.

Being as the only things I believe I am irrationally scared of are balloons and heights (and it's not too irrational to worry about falling to your death), and I though both were rather impractical costumes, I went for the next best thing.

Contact lenses.

I hate them.

Fortunately I don't need glasses, so had never tried them, but the sight of Mrsslippy poking things in her eyes makes my stomach churn.

So when I found that I could buy them online, it didn't take me long to decided that I would be a zombie.

Bringing up the courage to put them in took slightly longer.........

Choosing a night where Mrsslippy was at work gave me all the time in the world to dither and blink and drop and cringe as I tried to do the most wrong thing in the world - poke myself in the eye with a bit of plastic stuck to the end of my finger.

And that was the easy bit. After 30 mins of blinking it off my finger every time it came to within an inch of my eye they were in. Then I had to get them out. I've never seen Mrsslippy doing it by leaning forward and slapping the back of her head, but having realised that the alternative I faced was going to have to actually pinch my eyeball, it had to be worth a try.

Didn't work - and another 20 minutes later they were out. I could do it.

Next preparation for Halloween was a 'flavoured vodka'. I was aware that people had previously dissolved cola cubes, jelly babies and such like in bottles for such occasions, but had never read anywhere in the rules that said they had to be sweets.

I fried my bacon and crammed it into a kilner jar and covered it with vodka. Within a couple of hours the fat had set on the top, and the vodka looked like heavily infected urine with chunks of dead flesh in it.

Nice.

Three weeks later, I passed it through a sieve, and it now just looked like fatty pus-ridden piss. Not disheartened yet, I carried on with the instructions, and put it in the freezer so all the fat would clump together, and I could poor it through a coffee filter to make a relatively clear liquid.

To filters later I had it. Slightly yellow in colour, but no bits, no sediment, and a very unsettling smell.

We had 10 different bottles to sample. It was going to be a messy night.

To be honest, mine wasn't too well received. In fairness, both the blog and the manufacturer of the Bakon Vodka never suggested that you drank it neat, but that it went very well in a Bloody Mary. On it's own, it was Bloody Awful.

Best vodka of the night went to Lizzie with her Mars Bar vodka, which was an absolute joy to drink, although I also enjoyed Garysliquorice, and Mrsslippys After Eight.

Best costume of the night went to Mrsslippy for her scarecrow.The full photoset is currently slideshowing on this page, or can be here or here in hi-res.

But the most terrifying thing of the weekend?

The contents of Gingerfecks digestive tract. Poor fucker retired to his bed within minutes of arriving on Saturday morning having been bad both ends, and didn't reappear until Sunday morning.

Pure evil - probably picked up from his sisters kids that were over visiting.